Ye Olde Inn

During my game this evening, one of my players asked if they could search for treasure in a single chest that was disarmed, while the other chests in the room were still trapped. Since the rules for treasure searching are for the full room, I said no. But this is a neat idea. I think I may allow it for my next group. It would be interesting as one chest could be disarmed, yet another hero take the loot leaving the rest still safely trapped for other heroes to deal with.

Thoughts?

Well, technically, it is a rule change, however, you are Zargon. 'nough said!

Open to interpretation, but...

North American Manual, page 20 wrote:

...
• If you successfully disarm the trap, the trap is removed and you may continue with your move. (See Disarm a Trapon page 21.) You may search the disarmed chest/furniture for treasure on your next turn.

To me, that says yes, you can disarm a single chest and search just that chest for treasure, leaving the others unopened and trapped.

In my new ruleset I had reworked the treasure seeking to stand for either 1 room or 1 piece of furniture with treasure cards falling into the hands of room searches only - if a given piece of furniture does not have treasure as per the quest notes, then there is nothing and the search is over (this was done so that there wouldn't be an overabundance of treasure cards being handed out in a given quest - basically, it's still the same possible cards as would be received using mb's actual ruling). I had created this rule for a variety of reasons, one of the big ones being exactly the scenario you mentioned above. Of course, the rule is not perfet, nor is it etched in stone yet.

I was thinking the same thing. I believe it would make a decent house rule.

Under the "classic" game rules rather than the remake, a search (for traps and secret doors) automatically disarms all chest/furniture traps and then you can open each chest individually and take out the contents which covers part of your house rule but not the other part as the other chests wouldn't still be trapped.

However under this version of the game, some traps such as Falling Block and Pit Traps are not automatically disarmed when found, instead the corresponding markers are placed on the board representing the found but not yet triggered traps which can be disarmed by the Dwarf or a character equipped with the Tool Kit.

The use of the same tile for both the found but not yet triggered trap and the feature that results from the trap being triggered (either by a character moving onto the trigger square or a failed disarm attempt) has resulted in a lot of confusion but Zenithfleet’s suggestion of placing the marker face down to represent the found but not yet triggered trap and then face up to represent the feature resulting from the trap being triggered not only helps to prevent that confusion but also allows the mechanism to be extended further beyond the official rules…

Rather than have those traps that don’t have a tile (spear, door, chest/furniture traps) being automatically disarmed/removed by a search, you could instead place any marker face down to represent the location of the trigger square for the found but not yet triggered traps, including door and chest/furniture traps (in this instance the marker would be placed on the trigger square in front of the door/chest/furniture) so that these would need to be disarmed by the Dwarf or Tool Kit user.

This would give you a hybrid between the classic and remake rules that would ensure that every trap could be found in a search and the trigger location marked, and that each trap would need to be individually and independently disarmed and that each chest/furniture or door could then be individually and independently opened which feels to me like the best of both worlds!